Free Whopper...if you don't mind getting rid of some friends

Burger King has an interesting promotion going on, as Ad Week reports, and I'd certainly call this the advertising gimmick of the week: If you're willing to remove 10 friends from your Facebook page, you can have a free Whopper. UPDATE: Facebook shut down the gimmick on Jan. 15 because of "privacy concerns," and is promising to put it back up. More than 200,000 friends were dropped while it was running (that's more than 20,000 Whopper coupons!)

In some ways, I actually see the value. Certainly many of us have certain friends on Facebook that we eventually realize we don't really know. Maybe they friended us back when we were just starting out Facebook page and were glad to have them aboard, or we friended them because they were a friend of a friend, but then at some point, when you're connected to a lot of people, you see them on your page, and you think, "Who is this guy?"

But whereas you can normally unfriend a friend without telling them, at least from what I recall, to win this free burger, you have to add an application to your Facebook page called the Whopper Sacrifice. As you eliminate some of your friends from the list, each person gets a notice, according to Ad Week, "explaining that the user's love for the unlucky soul is less than his or her zeal for the Whopper."

That may leave a bad taste in your mouth. On the other hand, if you really do like Whoppers...